The Ninth International Congress on Toxoplasmosis will be held in June/July[unreadable] 2007 in Chico Hot Springs, Montana. This is an international research conference[unreadable] dedicated to the protozoan pathogen Toxoplasma gondii. The meeting has been held[unreadable] biannually for the last 20 years and switches between Europe and the United States. The[unreadable] 2007 conference will be organized by Drs. Silvia Moreno, Michael White and Boris[unreadable] Striepen. Toxoplasma gondii is an important cause of opportunistic infection in AIDS[unreadable] patients. This parasite also frequently causes congenital infection and it is estimated that[unreadable] one out of a thousand pregnancies in the U.S. is complicated by toxoplasmosis. T. gondii[unreadable] is also considered a potential bioterrorism threat (appendix B) due to its ability to cause[unreadable] waterborne outbreaks. Lastly, T. gondii has emerged as a genetically tractable model[unreadable] organism to study the biology and pathogenesis of several important human and[unreadable] veterinary parasites including Plasmodium (malaria), Babesia, Theileria,[unreadable] Cryptosporidium (appendix B pathogen), Cyclospora, Neospora, Eimeria, and Isospora.[unreadable] This meeting is important in that it gathers all of the laboratories working on T. gondii[unreadable] and allows for the exchange of new ideas and approaches both on a formal and informal[unreadable] level. Participants come from allover the world (Europe, US, South America, Australia,[unreadable] Japan) and the meeting brings together molecular biologists, clinicians, industry[unreadable] researchers and public health officials. The goals of the meeting are to disseminate new[unreadable] advances in the field, highlight the importance of T. gondii as a model system, foster[unreadable] collaboration and field-wide initiatives, and to introduce new or younger investigators to[unreadable] the leaders in the field. This meeting has fostered an environment of cooperation and[unreadable] collaboration in work on T. gondii that is not often seen in fields as high paced and[unreadable] competitive and has facilitated rapid and sustained progress in research on this pathogen[unreadable] and related parasites.